Theme files for my WP tweet archive

Last month, I posted a short little write-up about how I created my own tweet archive. It was a quick hack, pulled together one Saturday afternoon, and fairly incomplete, at best. But the archive serves its simple purpose every now and then. I intended to update the archive, add some features, and modify the theme files to better prep them for distribution. But I’m realizing I probably won’t get around to that any time soon.

I’m seeing lots of other folks building out their own archive. And lots of them are using the WordPress solution I wrote about. So in the interest of providing a rough starting point, I’m making the WP theme files for my tweet archive available here (under a CC license) for anyone who wants them as a base. Download tweets.zip (39 KB).

One followup note… Andy Graulund (@graulund) is building a similar tweet archive that is much more robust and more awesome than my original. His is a PHP-based solution (no WordPress required) with embedded media, permalinks back to Twitter, graphs showing tweet activity, and more. I believe he’s planning on releasing his source soon. Keep an eye out for that.

WordPress-based browsable, searchable archive of tweets by Douglas Bowman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Hello, Twitter, one year later

A year ago, today, I joined a small startup with a penchant for brevity. Many of my friends were using it. My mom had only heard mentions of it. I noted some risk, but saw greater reward. Variables were undefined. The product was still in its infancy. But potential was everywhere.

One year later, I’m just as eager and excited to head into work today as I was then. More so. Because I know even more about this growing company, the amazing people who work for it, the humbling principles under which it operates, and the myriad of purpose it serves. I’m thrilled with what we’ve accomplished in Design, and with the designers we’ve hired to do the accomplishing. We’ve pushed out some “good” and a fair amount of “awesome” so far. But we still have much work to do.

It’s cliché, but still true. Time flies when you’re having fun. And what fun we’ve been having. Here’s to looking back at a fantastic year, and forward to another that puts last year to shame.

A browsable, searchable archive of tweets

In the past, I’ve wanted to browse or search through my own tweets. Viewing my Twitter profile is one way to do that. But if I want to browse back through history, it’s a chore to go back very far. And forget about searching through my own tweets on Twitter since Twitter Search currently only goes back about a seven days.

I know there are a few apps or scripts that create backups and much more for you. But I wanted a database and simple UI completely within my own control. One that wouldn’t go away if the developer abandoned it. So one Saturday a few weeks ago, in a little over an hour, I had my own, free, browsable, searchable tweet archive. Now I can easily browse back to my very first tweet, or search for those quotes by Paul Rand I tweeted last year. This isn’t anything entirely new. I’m just writing it up what works for me in case it helps fit some pieces together. continued

You cannot copyright a Tweet

Though this may not completely eliminate liability if a publisher or artist rewraps a whole series of your tweets in a different shell, Zeldman makes an interesting point on the limitations of copyright in regards to short phrases (i.e. tweets):

As messages sent via Twitter cannot be longer than 140 characters, they cannot be copyrighted. However original, witty, or profound they may be, nothing more than good manners protects your original expression of authorship. If you wish to let other people quote or use your Tweets, you need not “license” them; indeed, technically, you cannot license them, since they are in the public domain the instant you publish them.

Accent Folding for Auto-Complete

Carlos Bueno highlights an oft overlooked aspect of internationalization. His address book auto-complete example at the beginning of the article crystalized the problem for me immediately. The solution he discusses for a fuzzy character match dubbed accent folding seems logical, especially in certain contexts. Beyond those contexts, the problem of transliteration gets complicated quickly.

50 Useful Coding Techniques

Smashing Magazine rounds up a few tricks for “CSS Layouts, Visual Effects and Forms”. Not everything in here looks useful to me, but I did notice a few gems while quickly browsing through. Bookmarked for later investigation.

Looking Back at Google in 2009

A fairly thorough retrospective of Google and the huge impact the company had over the past year. Check out the list of releases and new ideas Google pushed in 2009. Impressive and scary at the same time. I wish the little blip about me leaving earlier this year weren’t present, though I’ll admit that’s how I found this article. This paragraph toward the end sums it up best:

Google in late 2009 is now covering or aiming to cover web apps, the browser that runs the web apps, the OS that runs the browser, and, according to rumors, even the computer that runs the OS.

Perfect Pitch

Helping Adactio get that perfect pitch. To nail it, even. You should probably link to his page too, if you’re so inclined to fight DMCA take-downs for the sake of SEO.

About the author

Designer, advisor, father. Former creative director at Twitter. Previously led design teams at Google, Stopdesign, and Wired. Disney geek. Giants fan.
  • Follow @stopon Twitter
  • Douglas on Facebook
  • Douglas on LinkedIn